In the GNOME bugzilla, there is an ongoing discussion about whether or not to include a patch into the default GNOME installation which would enable GNOME to (optionally) have a global application menubar, similar to that of the Mac OS and KDE (in the latter it is optional and off by default). Installation instructions and .deb packages, as well as a 60-page (and counting) discussion of the patch, are available on the UbuntuForums. Read on for a poll on this issue.

I'd like I suggest an application icon anyway. It might nudge the less observant (e.g. myself in this situation) into noticing that they've accidentally clicked the desktop or another window.

The main reason I bring this up is that when the application toolbar is at the top of the window exclusively, you end up giving focus to the window when clicking the menu. I think the lack of this functionality is a real shortcoming of global navigation in general, and I'd like to see a much more well-thought-out solution than my idea of adding an indicator icon and an application name to the global menu.